Sorry again for the long interval. I have finally settled down into a new city and settled enough to resume blogging. Hopefully it was the final long break from doing what I so love doing.

After having collected a good bit of orange zest, I wanted to prepare an eggless orange cake since a long time, and finally I found the occasion for it. The hubby wanted to take it to a breakfast potluck and I volunteered ‘poha’ and cake. Saturday morning seemed like a perfect time to get baking. After having gone through several recipes, I zeroed in on Shammi’s orange cake, minus the filling.

I used the Twinings tea bags – Fruit Bliss Infusions instead of the orange juice, so started by brewing a very strong tea with two tea bags in 1/2 cup of water, squeezed the life out of the bags, extracting every bit of flavour from them and let it cool.

Since I was baking after a long time, I decided to do it in a better fashion than the usual hasty way I like to bake, this time sifting the dry ingredients diligently, even at that time I didn’t realize that something was wrong. Finally mixed the dry and wet ingredients, tons of fresh orange zest and the zingy fragrances were already making me dizzy. Finally, I couldn’t resist and I dipped a finger in the batter to taste the yumminess and it hit upon me that this batter is too coarse and powdery in my mouth. In a panic I picked the flour packet to read the label, it said ‘Rice Flour’. By then it was too late to do anything but bung the cake tin into the oven and silently mouth some prayers to goddess Annapoorna that it at least turns out edible. It turned out more than edible, in fact it tasted like a gourmet version of our favourite fried Tambram delicacy ‘Adhirasam’ – orange adhirasam! The crust was crisp as though it had been fried and it tasted fantastic.

Finally when I made the correct version with all purpose flour, we still wanted to reach out for the crunchy orange rice cakes.

I love using these fruity tea brews in cakes, there’s one pack of Vanilla-Blackcurrant that going be used soon! Just 1/4 cup of orange juice, zest and the orange tea made this a fabulously flavourful cake, giving it a big orangey blast that we just loved. The correct version was much appreciated at the potluck 🙂

22.10.2010 Edited to add another recipe of this cake with a mixture of whole wheat, cornmeal and rice flour. [L-Rice flour cake, Top- AP flour orange cake, Bottom - Gorgeous crisp crust of rice flour cake] Sorry again for the long interval. I have finally settled down into a new city and settled en

Add the juice, tea, orange zest, flour and raisins - mix well and pour into the prepared pan.

Bake for about 35 minutes or till the cake tests done. After some ten minutes, remove onto a wire rack and cut when completely cooled. Serve with tea :).

Recipe Notes

After having baked this cake twice in two days, I have nearly memorized the ingredients - which means I'm going to making this more often!.

This is Shammi's second cake recipe I have tried this month, the first one was Eggless Carrot Banana cake that I selected to bake for my son's first birthday on 4 December. He ate a whole slice, and was willing to eat more had we let him, which leads me to believe that he quite liked it :).

Cya around folks, this blog is going to alive and kicking now on! [Now that I have made this announcement publicly, I had better live up to it :P.

Good to see a post from you, Nandita, and the orange cake looks fantastic. You seem to have made a serendipitous discovery here with the rice flour. I might try and experiment with half and half rice flour and maida. Belated Happy Birthday to your cute baby boy!

Pari – sure, that gives me an idea to try baked athirasams :)Nupur – I’m happy to be back – and I want to write about meeting you which was the first of the three bloggers I met in all, one after the other 🙂 Thanks for your wishes, have posted a birthday collage on FB.Manasi- thanks :)Yes Mona, we end up learning something from every little mistakeDIvya – try it, great way to add new flavours into cookingMadhuli – thanks a lot for your wishes

Good to see you back. Hey I too tried Shammi’s orange cake. Yet to post it on my blog. I have heard from a relative of mine who used rice flour thinking to be maida for baking. She also told it turned out well.

Great to read your post, and looking forward to many more, regularly! It’s so nice when a mistake turns out as well as your cake did. The pictures look good enough to eat off the screen!Good luck in the new place, and hope your little boy is doing well.

Kamini – thanks for coming back 🙂 and for your wishes.Subha – well, you have a point, but I am not even a moderate expert on Tambram cuisine let alone all of Tamil cuisine, so I write what I know – given so much diversity in each state, I don’t know if what one kind of people eat is eaten by the others, hence my statement. So now i understand, this is not exclusive to Tambrams, but exists in all Tamil cuisine, and may be to some other southern states as well, known by some other name…so no offense intended to anyone.Thanks A!